Chevron and Waynesburg University announced today the launch of the Chevron Center for Corporate Social Responsibility at Waynesburg University, a first-of-its-kind center in the region. The center was made possible through a $250,000 commitment from Chevron.

During a press event hosted by the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, representatives from Chevron and Waynesburg University shared their excitement about the partnership and provided an overview of the center’s programming.

Our partnership with Waynesburg University underscores our belief that the best way to support the region, now and for decades to come, is to work with community partners to achieve shared goals.”

-Trip Oliver, manager of policy, government and public affairs for Chevron Appalachia

The center will seek to build a network of professionals in the region, encompassing all of southwestern Pennsylvania, and will be dedicated to sharing best practices in corporate social responsibility (CSR) work. As a membership organization, valuable resources will be shared with members to build strong and more valuable CSR programs.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Rainbow Chen, a second-year student at Brown, leads a group of high school students up and down Broad Street in Providence's South Side, a low-income, majority Hispanic neighborhood. They’re in search of local residents willing to be interviewed about living here for a project called “Humans of Providence,” which strives to unearth stories of people who traditionally have not been represented in narratives about living in the city.

So far, no takers — yet Chen and her fellow students are undaunted. They continue their search, sharing an easy camaraderie as they wander down the street. It’s obvious they’ve spent a lot of time together.

“This is not just a job for me,” Chen said. “I am so lucky that I get to spend time with these youth who are going to make such a big difference in the world.”

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- From Tanzania to Mississippi and the Blue Ridge Mountains to the South Carolina coast, Wofford College’s Bonner Scholars celebrated their summer “vacations” in service to others.

The program’s “Summer of Service” placed 31 Bonner Scholars in a variety of service positions this past summer. Many worked with children; some assisted special-needs adults; others returned to their hometowns to work in YMCA or summer camp programs.

Bonner Scholars are required to work with a nonprofit organization of their choice during two summers of their college years. Wofford scholars have worked in local, national and international communities, returning to campus with broader understanding and new perspectives on life’s challenges.

Bonners also serve during the academic year, but the summer service is full-time and gives students a more complete experience in a field of their choice.

The letter of the editor, Abbie Tanyhill Darst ‘03, opens as follows: “Since Berea’s founding, service to the region upon whose foothills Berea is located, has been fundamental to the function of the College and a product of the education with which our students leave. John G. Fee’s vision to educate the impoverished of all races and genders could only be met after meeting the needs of the communities Berea intended to serve. is idea of service and community involvement became the foundation for Berea to grow into the service-minded institution it is today.”

Sewanee’s flourishing civic engagement program reaches beyond the Domain to prove that a crucial part of preparing students for success is giving them opportunities to interact meaningfully with the communities and people around them.

At the first-ever ALL IN Challenge Awards ceremony to recognize colleges and universities committed to increasing college student voting rates, Edgewood College received two Best in Class Awards.

The College is recognized for having the highest student voting rate among four-year, private institutions category, as well as within the four-year, small, private institution category. Edgewood College also earned a Silver Seal for achieving a student voting rate between 60 and 69 percent.

More than 30 awards were announced at the event that took place at the Knight Conference Center at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

The University of Nevada, Reno Honors Program has implemented a Bonner Leader Program, developed by the Bonner Foundation, to provide students with financial support and opportunities to engage with their community. The program aims to allow first-generation, underrepresented, and/or low-income students the option of going to college and giving back to their community through service initiatives.

Not long after Helen Mandalinic ’14 arrived at Guilford in 2010, she began volunteering with the Community Kitchens Project, a program that packages cafeteria leftovers into meals and delivers those meals to the area’s needy.

She quickly realized her passion for service didn’t need to be put on hold for her studies, and her education at Guilford would extend beyond the classroom and the campus.

People in the Davidson area and beyond who are interested in public policy now have a great new resource, thanks to the college's Bonner Scholars. The Bonner Scholars recently unveiled their latest project–a comprehensive website called PolicyOptions.org focused on bringing together in one place information regarding public policy, policy changes and social services. Naomi Coffman '16 and Rashaun Bennett '16 are the Bonners primarily responsible for keeping the website up to date. The project began at Davidson in the fall of 2013. Kristin Booher of the Center for Civic Engagement office encouraged Coffman, along with Zoe Williams '14 and Philip Yu '16, to get involved, and Coffman immediately saw the potential.

Kindergarten student Quentin Larkey rarely missed an opportunity to read books each Saturday morning this semester with Emory & Henry students who volunteered at a children’s reading program at the Glade Spring Library.

His mother, Rachel Larkey, said her son was very excited to attend the reading program each week. “Toward the end of the semester, he was already reading easy readers. It helped him tremendously with his skills.”

Among the typical fall-term conversations about mid-terms and the upcoming fall break, other important conversations are being had by first-year Bonner students: in particular, where they will be performing up to 2,000 hours of community service in the years ahead.

Centre currently hosts up to 60 Bonner students on campus, each of whom have a specific service site they work at every week. Bonners are dedicated to addressing a variety of social issues, including poverty, diversity, access to education and/or healthcare and community development. Bonners work to solve these problems in the Danville and Boyle County community through eight to 10 hours of community service per week—a hefty commitment when added to demanding course loads and extracurricular activities.

Stetson University students who volunteer as income tax preparers for local families, reached a major milestone on the evening of Wednesday, March 9, 2016: $1 million in total tax refunds. Through the Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Program, Stetson students are trained to become IRS-certified tax preparation agents who help prepare and file tax returns for families with an income limit up to $54,000. After six years of operation, the VITA Program just reached its one-millionth dollar in total tax refunds during the Wednesday night session.

Centre continues to climb the Washington Monthly’s annual rankings of the nation’s top 255 liberal arts colleges, ascending from #36 to #35 and marking its fourth year in a row holding a top-50 spot.

Unlike other ranking systems, which often focus on campus life or academic rigor, Washington Monthly magazine analyzes a college’s “contribution to the public good” in three different categories; as its website states, overall rankings “reflect excellence across the full breadth of our measures” rather than excellence in one category alone.

Service is a major component of the Centre experience, and many students went out of their way recently to give back to the local community.

Students in the Bonner Scholars Program and Centre Action Reaches Everyone (CARE) donated 7,000 hours of service to the downtown area of Danville alone in the calendar year of 2012. With many students eager to give their time and several important agencies just minutes from campus, things come together naturally.

How can you empower racially, ethnically, and linguistically marginalized kids? By teaching them how to research compelling questions in their own communities, says educational studies professor Brian Lozenski.

For five years, Lozenski has been working with youth at a community organization called Network for the Development of Children of African Descent. Each year through a NdCAD program called the Uhuru Youth Scholars Program, about a dozen high school juniors and seniors receive academic credit for conducting research on issues prevalent in their communities.

This semester, for instance, the high school researchers—along with several Macalester Bonner scholars—are exploring ethnic studies programs in Twin Cities schools. Past projects have included policy briefs sent to school districts detailing ways in which they could educate guidance counselors about historically black colleges, and a youth summit looking at the experiences of African American students in Twin Cities schools.

Berea College is one of 240 U.S. colleges and universities selected by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to receive its 2015 Community Engagement Classification. This classification, which must be renewed periodically, was first awarded to Berea College 2008.

Experiential learning through community engagement is a long term investment. Sometimes the payoff takes decades because Guilford College's stewardship is built on the idea that some good things can't be measured by quarterly returns or academic semesters. Bonner Center for Community Service and Learning and its student coordinators and teams of student volunteers have run some community sites for years, long enough for refugee and immigrant children who were tutored by Guilfordians to have grown up ready for college themselves.